Freefall
by Fire Tears
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, falling is the good part. It's when you hit the ground that everything goes to hell. [YamiSeto]
1. Freefall

**Freefall**  
_Contrary to popular belief, falling is the good part. It's when you hit the ground that everything goes to hell._  
by Alena  
August 13th, 2004

When Yami wakes up, it's in an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar warmth beside him, and just like the warmth radiating from it, the body is (he convinces himself) unfamiliar.

But some distant, three thousand-year-old memory insists that it's achingly familiar. For the first time, Yami ignores such memories, and turns his attention onto why he feels so exhausted, why he's awake when he's feeling like this, and why it's one-ten in the morning.

Then memory kicks in.

And then he doesn't have to ask himself who's in the bed beside him, or how Yami got there. He remembers. Doesn't, actually, regret it, which is unexpected but gratefully acknowledged.

Belatedly, he realizes that Yugi is the reason he's awake. Yugi, calling faintly from the back of his mind.

{Yami, curfew is in twenty minutes. Where are you? Are you all right?}

[I'm fine.] Yami slides out of bed, and he knows that he sounds anything _but_ fine, although he isn't sure what he sounds like. But it isn't fine.

{You don't sound fine,} and Yami thinks that Yugi needs to stop picking up his private thoughts. {Where are you? Where have you _been_? I've been worried half to death; you usually call!}

[I'm coming home.] He knows that he isn't being fair with these short, clipped answers, and Yugi deserves to know where he's been but Yami doesn't want to talk about it now. Not now, while he's pulling on his pants and discovering his shirt and wondering how it managed to get under the bed.

{Yami—}

[I'm safe. I'm fine. I'll be home soon. Don't worry any more. I'll explain later.] Yami cuts him off, and that's _really_ unfair, but. Yami just doesn't want to deal with Yugi right now. He's not, actually, freaking out about this. He's just not sure what to do with it.

And he'd tried to be quiet while leaving, but he bangs into the night table while grabbing the Puzzle, and he thinks that the part of him that's still attached to the Puzzle caused him to do that, because he wasn't fair to Yugi and leaving at one-ten in the morning without so much as a note would be insanely unfair to his bedmate, and even if his bedmate is unorthodox in some (okay, most) of his methods, Kaiba Seto has always been fair.

"Leaving so soon?" He didn't even hear Seto moving (but the bed isn't squeaky, he _knows_) but when he turns around, Seto is sitting up and supporting himself on his arms. There isn't a single emotion on his face or in his eyes, but there's an echo of _'stay'_ hanging around the room like an unpleasantly thick fog that neither of them can properly navigate through.

"I have to be back in twenty minutes," Yami says tersely, because he's trying to deal with the fact that _Seto_ is there, not _Kaiba_, and he knows that if he leaves now he'll never get a chance to see _Seto_ again. "Curfew."

Seto blinks, slow and lazy, and Yami feels oddly like their should be a curving smirk/smile on Seto's face, and he thinks maybe there could be if—

"It's not a school night." Seto's eyes flicker to the clock, then back to him. "Morning," he corrects.

_'Stay'_

—if Yami would stay.

It's hard to say no, because Seto is looking at him and even though he's pale and slim he's _anything_ but fragile, but Yami thinks that maybe somewhere inside Seto _might_ be.

Yami wants to kiss him.

Or rather, wants to kiss him again, because he'd kissed Seto tens of (feels likes thousands, want thousands more) times, and he knows what that mouth feels like before sex, and during sex, but not after sex, but he wants to know because with Seto he would probably the _first_ to know what Seto kisses like after sex.

_'Stay'_

And he knows what those eyes look like before sex, too, but mostly during sex, because Seto's eyes are sharp and _focused_ in an almost disturbing way, like Seto is trying to memorize everything.

As if he knows that of his own violation he won't see it again.

Or maybe he just looks like that with Yami.

But one image Yami can't get out of his head is how _wild_ Seto's eyes looked for a split second. _Wild_ and _open_ and Yami knows that Seto didn't mean to let go of his mask, of his control, but for a second Yami saw Seto's soul, and in that second it was the most beautiful and frightening thing he's ever seen.

For just a second, with him, Seto _let go_.

And he thinks it scared them both to death and back again.

"I—" he stumbles.

I love you, he doesn't say, only because it's stupid to say that to Seto because Seto, strong-willed cocky Seto, couldn't handle it, and he would run, and Seto has resources and could run much farther than most people and leave no trail, or at the very least, no way to get within ten miles of him.

"I have to go," he finishes finally, and he thinks that might have been a worse statement than 'I love you' would have been, but 'I love you' is explosive and dangerous and not in a good way, and 'I have to go' is damage control.

But Seto's good at hearing things unsaid.

Later that day, Seto leaves for America a week earlier than planned.

And Yami knows he heard it anyway.

* * *

Comments/criticism, anyone? And should I do a second part?

Also, THEY ARE SO DYSFUNCTIONAL OMGWTF. Seto, you are an emotional _freakshow_. Yami, you need to stop trying to _be_ an emotional freakshow, because Seto does not need more instability and insanity in his life, no matter how much he wants it.


	2. Silently We Wander

**Silently We Wander**  
_Yami knows he screwed up, and Seto doesn't give second chances._

Yami wants to blame Seto, but that's not fair, because just because Seto ran farther and for longer doesn't mean that he was the only one who did. Yami knows he should have stayed. Yami knows what he could have said before he left. He doubts it would have stopped Seto from leaving, but maybe he wouldn't have been gone so long.

How many times did he pick up the phone and stare at the numbers, biting his lip and trying to figure out what he was going to say? What he _could_ say? One month ago, three months ago, eight months ago, a year ago, a year and a half ago, three years ago, five years ago. Five years ago, he knows exactly what he could have said.

_"I'll stay."_

Seto had been waiting for it, and that's the worst part, because Seto doesn't wait for anyone or anything, but he'd waited for _Yami_ to say _that_, and all Yami did was confirm to Seto that he _still_ can't count on Yami for anything but his life.

Yami will never get used to Seto being gone.

There'd been a report on the news a few weeks ago, mentioning that Seto would be coming home in two months' time, but for how long or if it were permanent, well, Seto wasn't one to willingly talk to the press. The actual news of his return had been a leak by an employee who most likely didn't have a job anymore.

Yami knew that Seto _could_ stay. If he asked. But Seto asked _him_ once, and that was a long time ago but the memory is still fresh for Yami and probably still for Seto, and Yami knows he should have and knows what he should have said, so what right does he have to ask Seto the same thing?

What obligation does Seto possibly have to say yes?

But Yami has to at least ask, because asking is the first step toward maybe possibly fixing what he screwed up.

Seto doesn't give second chances. But Yami isn't asking for a second chance. He's asking if he can go back to that first and only chance and...

and...

He doesn't know. He doesn't even know why he wants to ask Seto to stay.

It's not the loneliness, because Yami isn't alone. It isn't even that he misses a rival and an equal, though he will admit that he does.

Mostly, he just misses someone who _understands_ exactly what it's like to exist in a void of nothingness and then wake up.

He's still got a week and a half before Seto returns.

Maybe by then, he'll be able to admit, at least to himself, that it's _Seto_ he misses the most out of everything he lost when he walked out.

* * *

Next (and last) part should be up in a few days.


	3. In this Void of Consequence

This is it, the last installment of the _Freefall_ trilogy. Yes, it's extremely short. Please don't ask me to continue, because there is no more. :p 

****

**In this Void of Consequence**  
_The only real thing you can do after hitting the ground is get back up and try again. Even if it kills you._

Yami doesn't know what he's doing here. Well, he knows, but he doesn't, if that makes any possible sense, because he knows what and why but he doesn't know the how.

Seto returned three days ago, but Yami waited until it rained because it had rained the day Seto left (did he plan that?) and... it just feels right to show up at his door, soaking wet and asking for...

A second chance at the first chance?

Seto doesn't give second chances.

"I was wondering when you'd show up." _I'd expected it five years earlier, before the plane left._

He's still standing in the rain, staring up at Seto in the doorway. Five years. Has Seto grown taller? It feels like it. It feels...

It only feels like Seto's grown further away.

Yami grabs the front of Seto's black shirt and jerks him down, which would have been impossible if Seto hadn't been ready for it and all but fallen into it.

Not romantic. Just desperate.

Yami thinks he might have done something like teleporting with his magic, because he doesn't remember the stairs, but he does remember a hot body and a hot mouth, and he can feel them hitting the sheets.

And the sex is nothing but a metaphor.

But Yami can go with that.

———

The last two times Yami had slept with Seto had been once in a room millennia away and once in this same place.

And both times, he lost.

Third time lucky, right?

Seto's breathing is even, and his mouth is turned into a small frown in his sleep (how can he look so blameless? Fucking bastard), and Yugi is trying to talk to him in the back of his mind.

He knows what he did wrong last time. So why is it so hard to do what he wanted to all along? He doesn't even have to _move_, because that's the point.

Don't move and you win. Don't be afraid of this.

He shifts, and he's not sure if it's to move closer to Seto or if it's to slide out of bed.

"Leaving so soon?"

Seto doesn't give second chances.

"I—"

But he's giving Yami the opportunity to mend the last one.

"I'm staying."

Seto's eyes are unreadable, and Yami is waiting for a decision, but he isn't even tense because it's in Seto's hands now, Seto's choice.

"Why?"

And Yami feels like he's been punched in the gut, because Seto was supposed to either accept that or tell him to get the hell out of his bed. But Seto loves to throw him off balance, loves to catch him off guard, and he wonders why he wasn't ready for this.

"I—"

and then Yami realizes what Seto's done, what Seto's doing, because he'd been wrong back then and for five years and he'd been wrong now. And now they're right back where they started, where Yami meant 'I love you' and instead chose damage control.

He'd forgotten. Seto doesn't do damage control. Seto does chaos and insanity and pain, and he's been doing it all his life. And he doesn't know how to do anything else.

And Seto is waiting for him. Still waiting.

"I love you."

Seto flinches like Yami just struck him, and Yami knows that what he's just started will either save their souls or kill them both in the most painful way possible.

But that's okay. Yami's been waiting for death for a long, long time.

But right now, there's a demanding mouth on his, and wild, open eyes boring into his right before they close, and whether their fate is death or salvation, it can wait just a little bit longer.


End file.
